After fifteen years of working with unwanted, neglected, abused, and aggressive horses, there was one horse who changed how Ryan worked with all the rest.  Starling was a horse with a history of aggression towards humans and was passed from the feed lot to foster homes. After a year of working with her from a place of quietness, consistency, and honesty, Starling was able to do what horses naturally do- reflect back those traits that were being shown to her. Starling became a different horse. She was kind and gentle to handle on the ground, gave riding lessons to children, and went to horse shows and earned many placements, giving her handlers the chance to say, "Once, upon a rescue horse, I won a blue ribbon!"


After this experience with Starling, Ryan's approach to troubled horses the last decade became less about a focus on the horse's behavior, and more about a focus on how we humans show up to the work.  With horse after horse since then, Ryan has found that showing up as our best self has more impact on what horses learn from us than any technique he's ever applied before. This is the foundation of horse human work we do at OUR. Following the training of Mark Rashid, we agree that “True horsemanship is developed in the mindful quality of everything we do—not just in the quality of everything we do with our horses.”